


The Pain of Hoping

by DilynAliceBlake



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25481758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DilynAliceBlake/pseuds/DilynAliceBlake
Summary: Someone accused me of taking them on an emotional rollercoaster.  That was chapters one and two.  Gauntlet thrown, I was then obligated to endeavor to.AKA Remus gets cursed and rejected all in the same day.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acerbumdulce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acerbumdulce/gifts).



Remus had gotten cursed, because he was careless. When his eyes flutter open to see Roman’s worried face above him, he thinks that he should have gotten cursed ages ago, if this was the result. 

“A kiss?” he asks, and at Roman’s nod, leans up to catch another.

Roman jerks away, surprise evident in his eyes, before understanding lights them. Pity follows, and Remus can feel his heart shatter.

“A kiss from a prince,” Roman tells him, somber and reserved, “has the same curse breaking properties as a kiss from a princess.”

What this means is that what woke Remus was not True Love. What’s worse is that he has given himself away. Roman knows the truth of his feelings, and Remus has been rejected.


	2. Chapter 2

After that, every time their eyes meet, or they’re in the same room; every time Roman catches Remus staring, he remembers that Remus is in love with him. In love with him enough that he thought it would break a curse, and Roman can’t stop thinking about it. He’s never had someone feel like that for him before, and quickly ends up thinking not just about Remus’ feelings for him, but thinking about Remus himself.

He starts associating Remus with the idea of romance, and before long, it’s Remus he imagines as the one taking him on dates. Remus is energetic, enthusiastic, often funny. What would it be like, Roman wonders, if he let himself- And so Roman falls in love.


	3. Chapter 3

Roman is practically made of hopes and dreams, a prince of the ages built up from the many stories of Thomas’ childhood. All the stories agree. When a prince meets his True Love, he doesn’t cower. Roman doesn’t cower.

“I love you,” he tells Remus, because he does. He’s fallen into it, first slowly, and then all at once. Now his every waking moment is shadowed by the thought, and Remus says “No you don’t.”

“I do,” Roman argues, but Remus knows Roman as well as he knows himself and he knows that Roman could never resist the lure of true love.

“You don’t love me,” he explains, slow and careful, because he doesn’t really want to do this, but he wants to play house even less.

“You love the idea that I’m in love with you. You want to be in love. You love romance, and you see me as the easiest conduit to that.”

Roman doesn’t understand, insists with passion that his love is true and Remus can’t convince him otherwise. So Remus takes the other route that will get him out of this difficult problem. Remus says “Too little, too late.”

Then it’s Roman’s heart that is the one to break.


	4. Chapter 4

You cannot, once you love someone, just turn it off like a light switch. It doesn’t matter how you hurt them or how they hurt you. It doesn’t matter if both your hearts are broken and it seems you can never be together. Love doesn’t fade just because you wish it would. Sometimes you love someone so deeply that that love becomes a part of you, and it will linger with you for the rest of your life, even if you never see them again. 

Roman is a prince and he doesn’t love in half measures.

He would never pressure Remus, won’t push and insist that he’s owed some regard. Instead, he does what you do when you’re in love with a person. He tries to make him happy.

He acts in small ways. Ways that won’t necessarily be noticed. He isn’t doing it for the attention when he suggests Remus’ favorites be cooked for breakfast, or he tweaks a few creatures to be a little more blood thirsty in the imagination’s gladiator arena. Roman doesn’t do anything obvious enough to get called out on.

But Remus has been watching Roman for ages, and knows him better than anyone, even Roman himself. So when the little things start to change in his favor, Remus notices, and despite himself, it makes him smile.

From the way it always makes Roman’s eyes light up, Remus can’t deny that against all odds, Roman glows in response to each smile.

If Remus looks directly, then Roman will look away in a failed attempt at remaining casual. But if Remus is being left out of a conversation for too long, sometimes Roman will slip something in to set up a dirty joke, and Remus can’t help but think that he’s never been appreciated for what he has to  _ say _ before. He’s being listened to. He falls more in love.


	5. Chapter 5

Through the highs and lows of their simultaneous love and heartbreak, the two of them are always happiest when they see each other. They hate not being able to spend time in each others’ arms. Without quite talking, and never touching, they grow closer and closer by the day.  
If they were more lovelorn it could be called pining, but each wants what is best for the other, and neither is willing to believe that they are it.   
Mirrors, reflections, equal and matched in past and hopes and emotion. But Roman would never push Remus, and Remus would never let himself be happy, and so apart they stay while each waits for the other to move on.


	6. Chapter 6

Roman wears the white of an untarnished hero, but though no black adorns his skin, he is in mourning. His love as rejected him, rightly so, and this is something that he wakes up to each day.

Someone else in the imagination gets cursed, and Roman finds that he can’t bring himself to kiss them. He stands frozen, lips refusing to touch theirs, and realizes that maybe hero isn’t his part to play. He lets the failed storyline fall away.

With no more quests to fill his days, Roman takes up painting. If he tried to save someone from a dragon and they kissed him in thanks, he’s no longer sure he could bear it with any grace. The paintings stare out at him, and their subject is all the same.

Roman stays away from Remus, but the duke still finds a way to haunt him. In each set of eyes Roman paints heartbreak. The memory is clear as day.


	7. Chapter 7

“That’s kind of creepy,” Remus says, peering at the painting’s peacefully closed eyes. “Did you watch me while I was sleeping?”

“I can’t paint your eyes,” Roman admits, and vanishes his current project and tools in the face of his rising shame.

“Couldn’t remember the exact shade?” Remus prods, too desolate to be teasing. In response, Roman leads him to a few works from before he could no longer stand the way his creations looked out at him. They stare, devastated, from where they are drying.

“Oh,” Remus says, soft and quiet. “Do I look like that?”

“Only when I’ve just said something heartbreaking,” Roman murmurs, and turns to finally face Remus.

“Do you need something?” Roman asks. Not with sarcasm, or like Remus is an obligation, but like anything Remus needed he would not fail to provide.

“I was wondering,” Remus says, because he had heard about the entire not-kiss debacle, “If you might like to go on a date.”


End file.
